


Odd Optics

by Zodiac



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Brazilian Cecil, Cecil's weird in a Night Valian way and Carlos wants to figure him out, Fluff, M/M, POCecil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2197224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zodiac/pseuds/Zodiac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a stargazing session, Carlos discovers that Cecil's eyesight is decidedly off when compared to a normal person's and he wants to figure out just what is going on with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odd Optics

**Author's Note:**

> I immediately thought of this when I remembered that there was a radio spectrum on the spectrum of light during Chemistry class. My specialization isn't the light spectrum or optometry, so I may have fudged the science a bit, but I researched them to the best of my abilities.

Cecil always wore glasses. It wasn’t that Carlos disliked the fact that he did; as someone who also routinely wore glasses, it would be plain hypocritical of him to think so. His real problem with them was that he was concerned about whatever Night Valian prescription Cecil had. Cecil’s glasses were _thick_ , thick enough to rival any elderly person’s specs, and they always made his eyes appear larger than they actually were. Any time Carlos asked him about his prescription, Cecil would just brush it off with a simple, “My eyes are just bad.” and leave it at that, so Carlos always dropped the subject. People with utterly abysmal eyesight went through their day-to-day lives just fine as long as they kept their glasses in decent shape, which Cecil always did despite everything, so he decided not to worry too much about it. Besides, he did look rather cute with those thick coke bottle lenses always settled in front of his eyes. To add to the cuteness, they were set in a purple frame with tentacle handles that seemed to have a mind of their own at times; he swore he saw them curl or move around Cecil’s dark-skinned ears when he glanced over at them sometimes.

Carlos just had no idea that Cecil’s eyes weren’t bad, merely different.

He was stargazing the night he did find out that interesting fact about his boyfriend. His setup wasn’t anything fancy, just a collapsible telescope he had brought with him to Night Vale on a tripod he had bought from the Ralph’s (Guaranteed to not run off with whatever you mounted on it or your money back!). As long as he made sure to pick a spot where the mysterious lights in the sky weren’t hovering over, he could get a pretty clear view of the sky, which happened to be surprisingly similar to the view he could get outside of Night Vale. Overall, it made for a lovely outing in the middle of the night, especially since his Brazilian boyfriend had made some Tereré for them to share while stargazing. They had to import the yerba mate that was required to make it, so it was only drunk during special occasions. The fact that Cecil saw this as one of those occasions made it even sweeter, or maybe that was just the pineapple and lime juices mixed in with it to make the cool, caffeinated drink sweeter. It wasn’t until Carlos excitedly waved Cecil over to share his favorite constellations with him that he noticed anything amiss.

“C’mon Ceec, you just gotta come have a look at these stars.” He insisted, plucking at his boyfriend’s sleeve. “I know the empty void of space is terrifying and occasionally illegal to look at, but those little points of light up above us that we call stars are just so scientifically-intriguing. Besides, the human eye forms them into fun little shapes like one big cosmical connect-the-dots puzzle. Surely the City Council can’t ban something as innocent and harmless as that.”

“Oh, they have before, don’t worry.” He began after finishing a sip of their shared drink. “It turns out that if you make connect-the-dot puzzles form sigils belonging to ancient, terrifying gods, then portals leading to their unholy realms tend to open up upon completion of the puzzle. Led to a bit of a dip in the number of children in Night Vale, but, other than that, there were few negative repercussions, so they were unbanned soon afterwards.”

“Oh… Well then, I promise that none of these have the potential to open up portals to hellish other worlds, so… come have a look?”

That seemed to convince his boyfriend that the cosmical heavens wouldn’t see fit to smite him down at the moment and, after carefully placing the container holding the drink down on a nearby flat stone, he stepped forward, lifting his glasses to rest on his forehead before bending down to look through the telescope. As soon as the lens was pressed to his face, an awed gasp left his mouth.

“Carlos, it’s so, so _beautiful_! Such vivid greens and blues and—Oh!—is that a few traces of red I see? Who knew that space was such a colorful place?”

_That_ definitely wasn’t right, Carlos thought, his jaw dropping as he stared at his boyfriend still admiring the swirls of color that apparently composed the universe, it just couldn’t be! The descriptions he was giving him, pulses and waves and constant smears of color, simply weren’t possible to see, not with a cheap telescope like that, anyway! Only more advanced ones were able to see the universe as the radio host now was and, besides, he had just been looking through it mere moments ago and he only saw space as one would without the aid of a telescope, just zoomed in. It simply didn’t make any sense!

And Carlos, scientist that he was, had to figure out just what Cecil was witnessing.

Sidling closer to him, he tapped at Cecil’s shoulder to draw his attention away from the colorful view he was seeing. “Cecil, that’s… that’s definitely not what it’s supposed to look like, babe.”

He jerked up at the touch, glasses slipping down to smack down roughly in their usual place on the bridge of his nose. “Really? Well, I have heard that the void of space is rather… voidy, so I _suppose_ all those colors up there wouldn’t make much sense.”

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be all, erm, “voidy”. Humor me for a second and just look up and tell me what you see, okay?”

He obeyed, tilting his head up skywards, eager to help Carlos out with something that seemed to be science-related. “Hm, something that can most definitely be described as void-like. Oh, and there’s some blues and greens mixed in too!” He then reached up, fingers closing over the frame of his glasses to move them down to the tip of his nose. “Yeah! There they are again! Blues and greens aaaall over the sky!”

Carlos frowned slightly, eyebrows creasing together in concentration. So it wasn’t a fault in his equipment, but rather, something that Cecil himself was actually seeing. A tiny seed of a hypothesis formed in his mind as to what might possibly be going on, but surely it was too farfetched to ever possibly be real, even in Night Vale.

Only one way to find out.

Curling a hand around his own chin, the scientist pondered for a few moments before giving his next request. “Now, can you look out around us and tell me what you see?”

Again, he followed his orders perfectly, turning his head in broad sweeps to ensure he didn’t miss anything that might be considered an anomaly. “More green this time. Some blues, but not very many.”

“Uh-huh… Well, how about,” He moved himself right in front of his boyfriend, hands on either side of his cheeks to make him look straight at him, “now?”

“Red.” Cecil said, cracking a huge grin at the physical contact. “As red as the caring, loving passion we share between us. Oh, also some oranges around your limbs.”

“Ceeecil,” He whined, blushing as red as the supposed passion they had and lightly swatting at his cheeks, “that’s not a subjective statement… But everything else, it’s really, _really_ interesting!”

“Is it really?” He asked, even more excited now that something about himself was scientific enough to garner his boyfriend’s interest in such things.

“It is!” Carlos insisted before beginning to blather away excitedly. “Since you saw all those colors without the aid of the telescope, that must mean that something _really_ scientific and amazing must be happening with your eyes and it’s absolutely fascinating!”

Lightly patting his hair, Cecil chuckled, using his other hand to push his glasses back into their proper place. “Oh, Carlos. I’ve already told you this before; my eyes are just bad, that’s all.”

Huffing out of exasperation, the scientist pulled his boyfriend’s face down enough that he could kiss him square on the lips in an attempt to show him just how wonderfully special he thought his eyes were. “They are not bad. I mean, sure, they might be bad when it comes to seeing like how people usually do, but they let you see things in an entirely different way! In fact, if my hypothesis is right, then you see things like the instruments do back home that I could only get access to once every few months, and that’s if I was lucky! This is… Cecil, this is _amazing!_ ”

“Really?” He asked, tone awed and eyes wide like someone who was just told the secret of the universe. “And how are you going to test if your hypothesis is correct or not?”

“One of the scientists on my team, Dave, he studied optometry for a little while. I’m sure we could cobble together something that at least resembles an optometrist’s office, get some dilating drops… Oh, this is just if you want to, of course!” Damn his mind, always thinking about science first, his boyfriend second.

Cecil giggled, pressing another light kiss to Carlos’ lips. “Of course I want to do this! You silly, acting as though I would ever _not_ want to help you out with science.”

“A-alright, if you’re sure.” Seeing the eager nod the reporter gave him in response rekindled his scientific enthusiasm towards the subject and he grinned as he moved back to get his telescope packed up. “Alright.” He said more firmly, much more confident in what he was going to do. “It’ll probably take us a few days to get everything set up, so I’ll let you know when we’re ready for you?”

He nodded again, helping Carlos get everything all together before they went home for the night, happy in knowing that the scientist’s distracted planning under his breath was caused by him this time and not one of his mundane experiments.

* * *

 

Sure enough, a few days later, Cecil found himself seated on an office chair with Dave doing his best to examine his eyes, Carlos standing off to a side to record the observations with something that was definitely _not_ a pen.

Dave was currently shining a light from a specialized machine into Cecil’s dilated eyes, which he didn’t seem to mind in the slightest, and scratching his head in confusion. “Now, I know I switched majors before delving _too_ deep into optometry, but I can tell you right now that this is not what a human eye should look like, or really any living creature’s.”

“Uh-huh.” Carlos said, scribbling down “Usual Night Vale weirdness.” on his notes. “And what exactly is wrong with them compared to a normal person’s?”

“Well, pretty much everything! His lens is more curved than it should be—resembling a TV dish or something like that—I can’t find his macula, and he has far too many cone cells. Basically, he shouldn’t be able to see at all, or at least, not be able to see like a normal person can.” He concluded, drawing back from Cecil.

“And yet you can with the help of your glasses, can’t you?” Carlos asked him, hurriedly taking down notes of everything Dave had to say.

“Mostly.” Leaning over to the small table they had pulled next to the chair, he plucked his glasses off of it and put them back on. “Like, right now I can see both of you, but there’s this faint reddish-orange glow just beneath your skin. Without them on, you two just look like human-shaped blobs of reds and oranges.”

“And you also see the sky and surroundings in colors without your glasses on too, right? Anything else like that?” Carlos continued on, writing down his responses.

“Yeah, pulses of colors come from the radio station. The colors and speeds they come out in depend on what’s on, but they come out as long as someone or something is broadcasting.”

“Hm-mm… Well, I’m still not quite sure how, but it sounds like you can somehow see in the infrared and radio spectrums of light in addition to the visible spectrum, which is… odd. Fitting, but odd.” The scientist explained, pausing in his writing to scratch at his head with his pen.

“Oh… And what does that mean?”

“That, without your glasses on, you basically see things as though you were looking through a pair of thermal imaging goggles—that’s fancy talk for what the cool guys in the spy movies use.” He added on when Cecil’s already-confused look became even more confused. “In addition to that, you also see radio waves, which I suppose you can do because you were chosen to be the next broadcaster at the station. Still have no idea how this is possible, though. It defies all sense of logic and what we know to be true about how the human eye functions.”

“Carlos,” He started, standing up from his chair to wrap his poor, stubborn boyfriend up in a hug, “you’re trying to apply outside logic to things inside Night Vale again. After a year of being here, I would have thought you learned better than to do that.” Pressing closer to him, he pecked his cheek. “It works as well as my eyes do when I don’t have my glasses on.”

His words took a moment to sink in, but, when they did, Carlos gave him a huge grin, standing up on his tiptoes so he could peck his forehead. “In that case, I should continue applying logic to Night Vale things because your eyes work perfectly fine without your glasses!” Cecil then shoved at him playfully for that comment, which only served to encourage him, pecking his perfect, wonderful boyfriend that, even now, he could not and probably would never figure out in a scientific fashion.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this and wanted to screech at me in a manner similar to socializing, then you can find my Tumblr right [here](http://catsandcomposers.tumblr.com/).


End file.
